International.

Ms Anna Faria -- who teaches a class on Portuguese culture to young people -- has asked her students to join in Amnesty International's annual summer postcard action, giving students an opportunity to write directly to "prisoners of conscience''.

The students will be writing postcards in Portuguese to the Brazilian street children who witnessed the Candelaria Massacre in July of 1993. Amnesty International noted that Police in Rio de Janeiro killed seven children and one young man in the attack.

Although attempts have been made on their lives to keep them from testifying in the case against three military police officers awaiting trial, Amnesty said the Brazilian government has offered very little protection for the survivors of the massacre.

Mrs. Faria's class has also sent postcards to Ms Victoria Arista, a Peruvian mother of seven children who was imprisoned for something one of her relatives has been accused of doing. Along with the Portuguese students, dozens of other students from both public and private schools plan to take part in the postcard programme, Amnesty said.

Some will write to Phuntsog Nyidron, a young Buddhist nun, in Tibet China who received a nine-year prison sentence after she led a peaceful demonstration in 1989 to support the Dalai Lama. Her sentence was increased, along with five other nuns, to 17 years for singing songs of freedom while in prison.

FIGHT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS -- Students in Anna Faria's (standing) Portuguese culture class take part in Amnesty International's annual Summer Postcard Action by writing postcards in Portuguese and Spanish to prisoners of conscience and Brazilian street children. From left Miss Katrina Dias, Ms Debby Lima, Mr. Rubin Dwarte, Miss Victoria Amaral and Mr. John Amaral.